A highly-anticipated Student Government Association vote on the newly proposed Financial Equity Board was delayed again Tuesday, following several weeks of discussion regarding the proposal and initial approval from the Financial Advisory Board last week.
The FEB proposal has appeared on both of Joint Session’s agendas in the last two weeks but hasn’t received a vote or discussion due to time constraints. If approved, FEB will function as a second body of SGA’s treasury wing, hearing student concerns regarding financial equity and recommending action to administration.
Joint Session also appointed two senate positions during the meeting, Communication Sciences and Disorders Senator and Writing, Literature and Publishing Senator.
The recently approved CSD senator, Jake Apitz, told The Beacon, after the meeting, that he wants to give voice to what is one of the smaller majors on campus.
“I definitely want to get more involved with upperclassmen because I’m still a freshman here and… hear more about what they have to say about what changes they’d like to see,” he said.
Alison Michalak was unanimously appointed to the role of WLP senator. She said in the meeting that despite the close-knit nature of the WLP program, students feel underrepresented and underfunded.
“I am super passionate about WLP,” she said in the meeting. “I think it’s one of the best places to be here at Emerson. That being said… I feel like the students feel like Emerson doesn’t care about them as much.”
Class of 2022 Senator Lindsay Debrosse was appointed to be SGA’s Board of Trustees Representative, beating out Class of 2022 President Cassie Shelley and Executive President Will Palauskas, who were also nominated for the role. Debrosse told The Beacon after the meeting that her background will help her bring a voice to students she feels are under-represented at Emerson.
“I think I can bring perspective and experience… I’m just a kid who got lucky enough to get into a school, who was lucky enough to also take out loans,” she said. “Emerson could benefit a lot from having more kids like me attend this school… I just want to be able to not be the only one at the table”.
SGA spent much of Tuesday’s meeting discussing the looming Emerson-Marlboro merger and bias reports with Provost and Vice President for Academic Affairs Michaele Whelan.
Responding to questions about submitting bias reports, Whelan said Academic Affairs doesn’t handle bias reports as specific cases. Instead, they serve as data for the department to consider when reviewing the on campus climate.
Bias reports are handled on a case by case basis by the college’s Social Justice Center.
“We get these aggregated reports that go to senior people in the campus that we share but they don’t have the comment, X did Y in Classroom Z four times… that is not there,” she said. “The course evaluation is the place where it does say, ‘I was dismayed to find that X happened in this class, and it had this effect.'”
During the Marlboro merger discussion, Whelan emphasized the college’s intention to create an infrastructure for the Individually Designed Interdisciplinary Program because of the individualized nature of the Marlboro curriculum.
“Right now at Emerson, IDIP [is] not something we’re recruiting for… so it was more something that you discovered once you were here rather than something that says, here’s a unique Emerson major,” she said.
